Rel="canonical" questions?
-
On our site we have some similar pages for example in our parts page we have the link to all the electrical parts you can see here http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/c/43/53/160/Electrical and we have a very similar page going from our accessories page to electrical here http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/c/43/72/221/Electrical We are thinking about putting rel="canonical" from the accessories electrical page to the parts one. We would do this for several pages not just this one.
Thoughts???
-
We put rel=canonical on it. Now there are several other reasons that we have way to many pages indexed. Big project coming soon, I hope!
-
Oh, ouch - yeah that's definitely has potential to spin out of control. I think rel=canonical would actually be great there, because the product page really is 100% duplicated.
-
just read your article
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/duplicate-content-in-a-post-panda-world
The Indexation “Cap”
Similarly, there’s no set “cap” to how many pages of a site Google will index. There does seem to be adynamic limit, though, and that limit is relative to the authority of the site. If you fill up your index with useless, duplicate pages, you may push out more important, deeper pages. For example, if you load up on 1000s of internal search results, Google may not index all of your product pages. Many people make the mistake of thinking that more indexed pages is better. I’ve seen too many situations where the opposite was true. All else being equal, bloated indexes dilute your ranking ability.
I liked it thanks!
-
Just started here about 1 month ago. We are thinking that it is the search causing this issue. We should have it fixed in the next few weeks. For example if you go to http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/search?term=dirt+bikes and then click on the first result. http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/p/43/53/210/1157/-/25928/Dirt-Tricks-KTM-Timing-Chain-Tensioner/dirt+bikes it has the search result as part of the url for tracking. I am thinking this could be causing hundreds of thousands of urls. We will turn this into a parametersso they can still track it but google will not index it. Any thoughts on this, or maybe it is to far off topic. Thanks for all your input.
-
I was about to say that 85 sounds significant, but then I noticed that Google has indexed 1.13M pages on your site. For your link profile/authority (which is respectable but still pretty medium-sized) that's a massive index. I strongly suspect you have a ton of duplicate content that's completely unrelated to this. You've probably got bigger fish to fry, honestly.
One thing you might want to look at is your search pagination, as that can easily spin out thousands of pages. Unfortunately, really sorting this out takes a pretty thorough audit.
-
of the first pair (ones like these ttp://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/c/43/53/160/Electrical http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/c/43/72/221/Electrical) around around 15 in each Classification and there are 5 classification so 75.
of the second pair (like this
http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/m/43/53/2/ATV-Parts-KAWASAKI
http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/m/43/72/2/ATV-Accessories-KAWASAKI
) about 17 per classification so 85.
Third level like (http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/v/43/72/10864/ATV-KAWASAKI/BRUTE-FORCE-300-2013 http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/v/43/53/10864/ATV-KAWASAKI/BRUTE-FORCE-300-2013) there are about 1100-1300
-
How many pairs of these duplicates are there across the whole site?
-
I agree one URL would be best; however, they said how the system is set up not really possible right now.
There are only two page that are the same and they are the same here on the next leave down too.
http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/m/43/53/2/ATV-Parts-KAWASAKI
http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/m/43/72/2/ATV-Accessories-KAWASAKI
So you think if there are just two page that are the same it is nothing to worry about? I know adding one or two paragraph of good content not just seo copy to the http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/c/43/53/160/Electrical http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/c/43/72/221/Electrical Having one focus on parts and the other one accessories. I know that is not my ideal situation but a possibility. I would rather just have one URL like you suggested.
Thoughts?
-
Yeah, I think Matthew's right about the duplication - it looks like these are basically landing on the same results. It's not a disaster, but it's certainly going to look like thin content. I guess I'd want to step back and ask if these two paths are really necessary - could they converge on one URL if you're really serving up exactly the same products? The best canonicalization solution is ultimately not to have multiple URLs.
The canonical tag is slightly odd here, just because the pages aren't 100% duplicates, but it's probably fine. Honestly, a lot of it boils down to how many search pages you've got across the site and how many are duplicated. If you're talking about half-a-dozen, it's probably not worth worrying about. If you're talking about hundreds of pages, then cleaning up your architecture and removing these duplicates could have real dividends for SEO (and possibly make life easier for your visitors, too).
-
Your welcome.
Have a great day.
-
Thanks for your input.
-
There are a few things here that I think you should be aware of.
1 if you leave it like that, you will have duplicate content issues, because both of those pages are the same, the pictures are just in different places.
2. The page http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/c/43/72/221/Electrical is a pr3 and the other is a pr1. I would personally keep the pr3 page and 301 redirect the other page to that page so you no longer have those duplicate content issues on your site. That way if you have anyone still visit that page through old links they will still end up on that pr3 page.
3. The url structure, is a bit messy for your site. I generally advise others to have something a long these lines. http://www.rockymountainatvmc.com/electrical this is an SEO friendly url. I am not saying the ones you have now won't work, it's just a bit messy that's all. Personally though if your getting good traffic to it, I wouldn't mess with it at all. Now if you were just starting out I would say change them asap.
In the future when making new pages, I would set it up to make a proper url structure.
Have a great day.
Matthew Boley
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
WordPress – parent category "blog" instead of regular "post page"?
In WordPress you normally show you blog posts on: Your home page. Your "posts page" (configurable in the Reading Settings) I want to do neither and have a third option instead: Assign a parent category called "blog" for all posts, and show the latest posts on that category's archive page. For the readers, the experience will be 100% the same as a regular "posts page". The UI, permalinks, and breadcrumbs will be 100% the same. But, I have heard that the "posts page" is important for Google for indexing and understanding your blog. So is is smarter SEO-wise to use a "posts page" instead of a parent category named "blog"? What negative effects might there be, if I have no "posts page" and just use the parent category "blog" instead?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NikolasB0 -
New site, new URL, lots of custom content. Load it all or "trickle" it over time?
New site, new URL, lots of custom content. Load it all or "trickle" it over time? Would it make a difference in terms of ranking the site? Interested in your thoughts. Thanks! BBuck!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BBuck0 -
SEO considerations around an "Ad Wall"
I'm not sure what the correct terminology would be for this but I'm calling it an ad wall. Essentially an ad overlay when someone enters a website. I see this most commonly on certain news websites. For example when you click on a link to an article on ign or forbes.com you get an ad that you have to close or skip to read the article. What are the SEO considerations if implementing something like this? I'm wondering if there are any similar to a pay wall in the sense that you want to let crawlers in to see your content and rank it but users get an ad or redirected to an ad and then back to the article page. This link currently does it for me for example http://www.forbes.com/sites/tjmccue/2012/05/22/spacex-launches-with-15-dreams-onboard/ I set my user agent to google bot and go right through to the article but if it is set to the browser default I get to an ad page I have to skip first. Is this the infamous "white hat cloaking"? Are the other ways to implement the same idea (a modal window that opens via javascript for example) that are more or less risky? I'm mainly interested in doing this based on referrer: people who type a URL directly don't see it but clicking on a link they do see it, for example.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IrvCo_Interactive0 -
Use of Rel=Canonical
I have been pondering whether I am using this tag correctly or not. We have a custom solution which lays out products in the typical eCommerce style with plenty of tick box filters to further narrow down the view. When I last researched this it seemed like a good idea to implement rel=canonical to point all sub section pages at a 'view-all' page which returns all the products unfiltered for that given section. Normally pages are restricted down to 9 results per page with interface options to increase that. This combined with all the filters we offer creates many millions of possible page permutations and hence the need for the Canonical tag. I am concerned because our view-all pages get large, returning all of that section's product into one place.If I pointed the view-all page at say the first page of x results would that defeat the object of the view-all suggestion that Google made a few years back as it would require further crawling to get at all the data? Alternatively as these pages are just product listings, would NoIndex be a better route to go given that its unlikely they will get much love in Google anyway?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | motiv80 -
How much does "overall site semantic theme" influence rankings?
OK. I've optimized sites before that are dedicated to 1, 2 or 3 products and or services. These sites inherently talk about one main thing - so the semantics of the content across the whole site reflect this. I get these ranked well on a local level. Now, take an e-commerce site - which I am working on - 2000 products, all of which are quite varied - cookware, diningware, art, decor, outdoor, appliances... there is a lot of different semantics throughout the site's different pages. Does this influence the ranking possibilities? Your opinion and time is appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs20100 -
301 redirect a old site that has been "dead" for a while?
Hi guys, A quick question. I have a client who has an old business website that had some great links (Forbes.com, CocaCola.com, etc). The problem is that he knew nothing about SEO and let the hosting expire. He still owns the domain, but the site is no longer listed in Google. He did no SEO, so I am not worried about being hit by any artificial anchor text penalties, since the links are as natural as it gets. So my questions is, would there be any benefit from 301 redirecting that site to his new business? The new business is in almost exactly the same niche as the old site. I am thinking of 301'ing to a sub-page which will refer to his past venture with the old business, not to the homepage of the new site. Thanks in advance for your help.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rayvensoft0 -
How would you handle 12,000 "tag" pages on Wordpress site?
We have a Wordpress site where /tag/ pages were not set to "noindex" and they are driving 25% of site's traffic (roughly 100,000 visits year to date). We can't simply "noindex" them all now, or we'll lose a massive amount of traffic. We can't possibly write unique descriptions for all of them. We can't just do nothing or a Panda update will come by and ding us for duplicate content one day (surprised it hasn't already). What would you do?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | M_D_Golden_Peak1 -
Where to point Rel = Canonical?
I have a client who is using the rel=canonical tag across their e-commerce site. Here is an example of how it is set up. URLs 1. http://www.beautybrands.com/category/makeup/face/bronzer.do?nType=22. http://www.beautybrands.com/category/makeup/face/bronzer.doThe canonical tag points to the second URL. Both pages are indexed by Google.The first page has a higher page authority (most of the internal site links go to the first URL) than the second one. Should the page with the highest authority be the one that the canonical tag points to? Is there a better way to handle these situations? Does any authority get passed through the tag?Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlightAnalytics0